C'mon they are not that evil. This is getting silly.
LOL. You got to be kidding me YES They are ;-)
Exactly.
I haven't seen even one mention here of what is probably Microsoft's primary motivation in this purchase.
Background:
Microsoft is all about control, surveillance and dis-empowerment of 'users' (ie everyone.) If you didn't pick up on this from their Longhorn whitepaper, or the NSA keys in Windows, then the Windows 10 telemetry model and being hand in glove with Intel and their Management Engine should have done it for you. Anyone who thinks the Wintel architecture has
any purpose other than enabling targetted surveillance of any and all computer users, is in denial and delusion land.
Copyright, DRM, media pay-to-view and App rental models are all just window dressing and camouflage, pretending profit motive and stupidity as sole causes for the mess. But the primary aim is social control and monitoring, keeping tabs on all tech developments and making sure there are no 'disruptive technology' surprises that might threaten Elite control of the people.
Even the '
corporations are required to serve the interests of shareholders, and have no other (evil) motives' is a superficial fantasy serving as a smokescreen hiding the reality. All large corporations like Microsoft, Intel, Alphabet, Facebook, etc have one primary goal - social control in the interests of the 0.001%.
The only potential threat to this control matrix, is independent open-source software development. It's chaotic and unpredictable, and million-monkey frameworks like Linux are easy to infiltrate and subvert. But independent developers still pop up disruptive surprises now and then. The worst case would be some new hardware and OS platform, that doesn't have any backdoors built in, produced by a previously unknown small, tight group of awake people who can't be bought and turned.
So why does MS want to buy Github?
They don't want to own the code in the repositories. They don't care about that, what they want is supervisory control. Being able to see all the code, in all the accounts, is just part of that. But what they
really want is visibility of who is doing what. Not just on Github, but on their own home/business PCs as well.
Remember that with the IME existing in all modern Intel-based PCs, all those PCs are totally open to access by the MS-Intel-three-letter-agency bunch. But there's a volume problem - a need to know who is worth snooping on. It's all about early warning and focus.
So now MS owns Github. That gives them the IP addresses of everyone accessing whatever code bases MS decides may represent threats to the control matrix. Pointers to individuals who might be doing even more disruptive code development or whatever, in private.
Microsoft just bought a method of selecting potential targets. This is why the high price. It's something they
care about. Sure, they'll try to screw a profit out of their purchase too, but that isn't the main objective.
Edit to add:
Btw, I've never used Github, or any such version control and dev sharing system. When I look at gihub projects I'm often struck by the total lack of anything I'd call decent project documentation. Which turns me off pursuing it. When people can't even write a one paragraph description of what a project is FOR, I tend to expect their software will be garbage too.
But I should learn. Anyone know of a concise introduction to the general topic of how such tools work? It's interesting that the gitlab stuff is open source, and could be used for individual local project management and in small group projects. This appeals to me.
Also I notice people using the word 'git' as a generic. So 'github' isn't just a made up name? What does 'git' stand for?